Discontinued USB adapter is the last nail in the coffin for influential tech.

Microsoft is no longer producing the USB Kinect Adapter needed to hook the latest version of the depth-sensing camera's proprietary connection to an Xbox One S, Xbox One X, or PC.

The adapter, which was briefly offered for free to Xbox One S purchasers through last March, was subsequently sold for $40 to users who still wanted to use the camera and voice-activated microphone array on more modern hardware. But Microsoft has now confirmed to Polygon that the adapter is no longer being produced, so Microsoft can "focus attention on launching new, higher fan-requested gaming accessories across Xbox One and Windows 10."

Further Reading

While the adapter can still be purchased second-hand (often at a significant premium), and the Kinect can still be used with original Xbox One hardware (or in Microsoft's Redmond campus store), the move is a clear, final nail in the coffin regarding any continued Kinect support on Microsoft's part.

Further Reading

But it's worth remembering how revolutionary the original version of Kinect felt following its explosive launch on the Xbox 360 in late 2010. The prospect of playing games without a controller led the $150 peripheral to become the world's fastest-selling consumer electronics device out of the gate, with 10 million units sold in under six months.

Further Reading

One could see the potential signs of an impending fad in that early success, though, as a relatively low initial attach rate for Kinect software showed users weren't engaging much past the bundled Kinect Adventures and perhaps Harmonix's Dance Central. Our initial assessment of the tech noted problems with lag, resolution, a lack of buttons, and a need for lots of space that would prove key to limiting Kinect's long-term appeal.

Further Reading

By the time a new and improved version of Kinect was being tied to the Xbox One in 2013, Microsoft should perhaps have sensed that the technology's moment had passed. But the company instead leaned in heavily on the improved hardware, confident that ubiquitous voice control from anywhere in the room would justify the $100 in additional hardware price over the competition. While that was no doubt true for some, the vast majority of consumers had clearly gotten over Kinect's "gee whiz" factor years ago.

Further Reading

Not that Microsoft seemed entirely aware of the shift in consumer sentiment. The "[Kinect] is really something that we feel, once you take out, lots of people will go, 'Gosh, I really liked that, I got used to it, and I'm going to miss it,'" Xbox Group Program Manager David Dennis told Ars just months before the hardware was unbundled from the Xbox One package. "I think the more consumers get exposed to it, the more they use it, they'll realize what a great, amazing experience it is."

While Kinect may not have ended up as the permanent revolution in the controller-free user interface Microsoft predicted, its impact on the consumer electronics industry is still being felt today. As Microsoft heads into its first full Kinect-free year this decade, it seems like as good of an excuse as any to drag out an old Xbox 360 and indulge in one more game of Dance Central to remember it by.

Promoted Comments

Alex Kipman himself has admitted the Kinect was a necessary laboratory stepping stone to the HoloLens. It helped commoditize the cost of IR depth cameras to point that we could see them relatively cheaply added to phones (both Apple's FaceID sensor and Windows' predecessor Hello sensor). If nothing else, the Kinect was an amazing bootstrapping decision to push what at the time was almost a $10,000+ Human-Computer Interface lab into a $150 bar you could buy in any Wal-Mart. It has done a lot for HCI lab work already. It has left its mark on the future just in all the research it has touched.

It reminds me of the LIDAR bootstrap article recently about commoditizing the LIDAR. The article focused on how self-driving cars might the drive to bootstrap things, but the Kinect is a reminder that even a "toy" can be a useful bootstrap. It's also a reminder that LIDAR, too, has some debt it owes to the Kinect for making some experiments easier to run in the lab; some LIDAR startups certainly used Kinects for mock ups and lab testing/comparisons. I know too many hobbyists that used Kinects for cheap LIDAR work to assume otherwise. They definitely benefitted from the commoditization of high resolution IR sensors.

56 posts | registered 8/27/2015

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Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl